But thinking US companies are different because they claim they're not working with the American surveillance state is mostly deluding one's self. If you ask them, Opera can also probably issue a statement saying that they don't let the Chinese surveillance state spy on them, if one says "I believe you" to one class of orgs, and "I don't believe you" to another class, and the difference is the race...

Obviously in the US there's more checks and balances, to make a company's statement more believable. Or that's what we believe anyway...

>Obviously in the US there's more checks and balances, to make a company's statement more believable. Or that's what we believe anyway...

Without significant prove that this is not the case this handwaving way of comparing the US democratic state to China is just wrong. From Consumer protection to free and fair elections the US system is almost nothing alike the chinese system. Of course the US has massive issues (as do other Western democratic nations) but this handwavy "well they just don't tell you' stuff without actual good data behind is just destroys any credibility and is a huge problem for our democracies. Please stop doing it unless you provide exhaustive evidence.

Consumer protection? Let's ask the people in Flint how their water is. Free and fair elections? Yikes, you want to talk about this during this regime? How about voter suppression, gerrymandering, making sure minority districts have to queue for hours on voting day, electronic voting booths with accessible SD-card slots? Just because it's not covered on FOX News, it doesn't mean the problems are not there.

Or maybe oooh "We have massive issues, but China is worse.".

Also I don't think Obama ever did any curtailing of the NSA's program. Hello to the NSA machine reading this!

Why would the standard of evidence for US totalitarianism be higher than for Chinese totalitarianism?

Because "it's obvious in the case of China"?

Opera was bought by Chinese companies, not the Chinese government.

Subject to Chinese laws though.. although what gets enforced is a different matter.

it's pretty much same, if you wanna do business in China, you must give access to all your data to chinese government and do selfcensorship

Yeah, I am pretty sur we have no problems with Korean and Japanese companies, but suddenly Chinese is new race aparently.

It depends on the person's post history...